Six Italian students win the Rotman International Trading Competition

The Blue Team of Rome-based Luiss University wins the most prestigious online financial simulation for university students in Toronto

Claudia Astarita

- 27 febbraio 2015

For the second consecutive year, the Blue Team of Rome-based Luiss Guido Carli University wins the most important and prestigious online financial simulation for university students. We are talking about the Rotman International Trading Competition (RITC), an annual event that brings teams of students and their faculty advisors from universities worldwide to Toronto, to participate in a unique 3-day simulated market challenge.

Teams are invited to participate in various activities including electronic and outcry trading cases, seminars with industry practitioners, and social events with their fellow competitors from around the world, which through years proved to be a very effective way to bridge the gap between Academia and real world. In past editions, RITC participants have competed in a diverse range of cases including open outcry, options, liquidity and algorithmic trading. Faculty advisors are invited not only to coach and observe their teams, but also to participate in various workshops on the Rotman Interactive Trader (RIT), the software used to run the competition.

Although it started as a North American gathering, year after years RITC began attracting students from all over the world. 2014 was the very first year in which an Italian team succeeded in getting the first prize, and the fact that the 2015 competition honored again a group of Italian young talents coming from Luiss University confirms the huge potential of Italian students and universities.

The team is made up of five men and one woman (Riccardo Caruso, Matteo Di Iorio, Dario Occhipinti, Alessandro Piacquadio, Jacopo Scarpellino and Anna Chiara Pizzuti), all of whom are enrolled in the master's degree program in Economics and Finance, with the exception of the youngest, Scarpellino, who is a bachelor's degree student in Economics and Management.

University of California, Berkeley and Canadian institutes University of Windsor; University Of Calgary; and Concordia University also entered the top five, while Winners of individual cases included the University of South Africa, Peking University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Calgary, Concordia University, and Chulalongkorn University from Thailand.